"Nancy Kress - Saviour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

SAVIOUR
Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the
mid-seventies, and has since become a frequent contributor to
Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, Omni and other periodicals. Her books include the
novels The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The
White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, Oaths & Miracles,
Stinger, Maximum Light, the novel version of her Hugo- and
Nebula-winning story, Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars
and Choosers. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and
Other Stories, The Aliens of Earth, and Beaker's Dozen. Her
most recent book is a new novel, Probability Moon. She has
also won Nebula Awards for her stories "Out of All Them
Bright Stars" and "The Flowers of Aulit Prison". Born in
Buffalo, New York, Nancy Kress now lives in Silver Spring,
Maryland, with her husband, SF writer Charles Sheffield.

In the intricate and compelling novella that follows, she gives us the story of an
enigmatic visitor from the depths of space, sent here on a mission no one
understands, but which gradually generates the realization that it somehow must be
understood, before it's too late and that the clock may be ticking in more ways than
one.

****

I: 2007

THE OBJECT'S ARRIVAL WAS no surprise; it came down preceded,
accompanied and followed by all the attention in the world. The craftтАФif it was a
craftтАФhad been picked up on an October Saturday morning by the Hubble, while it
was still beyond the orbit of Mars. A few hours later Houston, Langley and Arecibo
knew its trajectory, and a few hours after that so did every major observatory in the
world. The press got the story in time for the Sunday papers. The United States
Army evacuated and surrounded twenty square miles around the projected
Minnesota landing site, some of which lay over the Canadian border in Ontario.

"It's still a shock," Dr Ann Pettie said to her colleague Jim Cowell. "I mean, you look
and listen for decades, you scan the skies, you read all the arguments for and against
other intelligent life out there, you despair over Fermi's paradox тАФ"
"I never despaired over Fermi's paradox," Cowell answered, pulling his coat closer
around his skinny body. It was cold at 3:00 a.m. in a northern Minnesota cornfield,
and he hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. Maybe longer. The cornfield was as close
as he and Ann had been allowed to get. It wasn't very close, despite a day on the
phone pulling every string he could to get on the official Going-In Committee. That's
what they were calling it: "the Going-In Committee". Not welcoming, not belligerent,
not too alarmed. Not too anything, "until we know what we have here." The words
were the president's, who was also not on the Going-In Committee, although in his
case presum-ably by choice.